Entrepreneurial journalism and what's next for news

What's next for news?

Journalism 2.0 is a conversation about the intersection of journalism and innovation. It's about the news industry adapting in the digital age, new business models for news and the startups and new projects that are flourishing around us, giving us a preview of what's next for news.

I had the honor of speaking on a panel at the NABJ Conference in New Orleans yesterday about producing for a multi-platform environment. Here is a quick hit of what I had to offer:

The most important step in producing in this era is actually not producing, but listening. You know the saying that to be a good writer you have to read a lot? Well, in order to be a good producer today, you have to consume a lot. Be smart about what you’re consuming and take note of why it’s resonating — or why it’s not. It’s also important to expose yourself to engaging content outside of the news echo chamber on today’s popular platforms; YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

Have you heard of the term “Social listening?” Type that into Google and go to school. Newsrooms use it much differently than brands, as the goal is not so much to find out what people are saying about you – although that can be insightful – but what are people talking about in your community. What content should you produce that is going to resonate with your audience? You don’t have to guess any more. Now there are tools that can tell you.

When producing content on any platform, be authentic and engaging, first and foremost, of course. Look for ways to bring social content onto TV and drive TV audiences to share on social, then find a way to highlight the best stuff on your site and app. We call this “The Circle.”

So the top 3 tips:

Start with listening

Be authentic and engaging

Complete the circle

The conversation yesterday in New Orleans was wide-ranging and spirited. Thanks to my fellow panelists and the audience for bringing their collective insights into the discussion.

(On a personal note, I felt especially honored to attend and speak at NABJ as my grad school advisor and one of the most inspirational people in my career, the late, great Chuck Stone, was NABJ’s first president.)

I’ve said that many times, starting with my first book almost 10 years ago. It’s always been true. And is the cornerstone of the talk I delivered Wednesday to a group of smart, enterprising college professors at ASU’s Cronkite School of Journalism during the Scripps Howard workshop for entrepreneurial journalism.

The key to turning your idea into a product or service is following a systematic process that incorporates tried and true principles from startup companies and corporate innovation programs. The process I favor has six steps:

Research it

Organize and define it

Craft it

Prototype it

Test it

Adapt it

Following this process – or one similar – will ensure that your great idea will meet the consumer’s needs and find traction. And traction with an audience is the most important piece to the puzzle since finding a revenue model only happens once you have created something that people actually want.

As Paul Graham has famously said, make users happy and the money will follow.

Much has changed since the first edition of Journalism Next became available in 2009, when the world had not yet heard of Instagram, Pinterest or Snapchat. But the core concept of this guidebook—to leverage digital technology to do better journalism—has not changed at all.

What is coming “next” in journalism? No one knows for sure, but we can all agree that it will be digital. Social networks will always come and go, and digital technology will continue to evolve at a dizzying pace. The pursuit of harnessing it to do better journalism will never end.

Learning about new technology is nice, but it’s not enough. With that in mind I’m proud to announce that a completely revised third edition of Journalism Next is now available. What makes this book essential reading for students, professors and working journalists is the connection it makes between new technology and emerging concepts with the core principles of journalism.

To help you get your arms around the limitless possibilities, the book starts with basic concepts like Web design, blogging and crowdsourcing. Once you have a sufficient digital foundation, you’ll explore specialized skills in multimedia, including audio, video and photography. The final section takes you through more advanced concepts, including data-driven journalism and building an online audience.

The goal is to get you going with a new skill or concept right away. After all, there’s no time to waste. The summary checklists at the ends of the chapters spell out specifically how you can do just that.

Since this is a practical guide, each chapter features a “Newsroom Innovator.” These sections offer tips and suggestions from working professionals who are subject-matter experts in their field—in their own words. You’ll read specific examples from Sona Patel of the New York Times, Robert Smith of NPR’s Planet Money, Etan Horowitz of CNN and Marissa Nelson of the CBC.

Jennifer Preston also wrote an inspiring foreword and is one of the true leaders in digital journalism.

I would like to thank them and all of the other experts who contributed, either directly or indirectly, to this edition, as well as the fine folks at CQ Press who made the process as smooth as possible.

The book is currently available on the CQ Press website and will be available soon (for less money) on Amazon. You can pre-order it on Amazon here.

Getting started with new technology can be intimidating. Making sense of it and finding the right opportunities with regard to journalism are additional challenges that have kept many smart news professionals on the digital sidelines.

Don’t let that happen to you. Jump in, get going and help build what’s “next” in journalism.

Happy New Year and welcome to a blank slate. That’s right; you have 12 months (give or take) to explore, learn, create and teach.

What are you going to do with that gift?

Recently I wrote a piece about the art of the side project for Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists. New Year, New You is my attempt to convey how much I’ve learned over the past decade while writing books, teaching, launching startups and attempting to build products – all as side projects.

I believe in side projects, because I believe in constant learning, exploration and self-improvement. Reading and researching is valuable, but getting your hands dirty and really digging in to something is more powerful. Testing what you learn and your new ideas on other people – through writing, teaching or making new things – is the ultimate test and the ultimate experience to build upon.

Imagine yourself on New Year’s Day 2016 and relishing what you have learned – and how you have grown – because of your latest side project.

While the implosion of Project Thunderdome at Digital First Media has captured the “future of news” crowd’s consciousness recently with many trying to gauge the evolution of the news business through this unfortunate development. But I’ve decided to break my long blogging drought to highlight a couple of success stories that have me as bullish on the future of news as ever.

One is the transformation of legacy media company. The other a startup that burst onto the scene several years ago but exploded only recently.

The Atlantic made a conscious decision to part with part of its heritage when it dropped “Monthly” from its brand title because it aspired to become a platform, not a magazine. As recently as 2009, the company’s revenues were generated entirely from its 150-year-old print magazine. Today, one-third of its revenues come from digital and another 20 percent from its burgeoning events business.

Vox Media meanwhile, grew out of a network of popular sports blogs that became popular in the last decade. Over the past two years, it has launch half a dozen new digital titles (SBNation, The Verge, Polygon, Eater, Racked, Curbed) and is already running at break-even financially. Its latest initiative, voxnews.com, will be launching soon led by the high profile transition of Ezra Klein from The Washington Post.

One company has been around for a century and a half. One for less than a decade. Yet the two are succeeding for many of the same reasons.

“Modern journalism is iterative, getting feedback from an audience and learning as we go,” said Jim Bankoff, presenting to an audience of about 400 at the International Symposium for Online Journalism at the University of Texas April 4. “And we believe that brands matter more than ever.”

The Atlantic shares that belief. But to evolve in the digital world, a traditional brand cannot remain constant. One approach by The Atlantic was to “stretch the brand to its breaking point,” according to the company’s president, M. Scott Havens, during a session at SXW Interactive on March 9. As a result, the company launched Quartz in 2012 and made a concerted push into mobile, which would be quite a stretch for a company if it still saw itself as a monthly magazine.

“If you’re a publisher and you’re not thinking about mobile, you should probably just get out of the business,” said Havens, who recently left The Atlantic to take a new job with Time, Inc.

The Atlantic has doubled the number of journalists on the payroll since 2009, according to Hastings. Quality journalists create quality content which drives a premium audience, which drives revenue and that gets reinvested in great content.

Looking for the business model in the digital age? That’s a pretty good place to start.

At Vox Media, which is the fastest growing media company in the U.S., they are making a number of “bets:” quality at scale, embrace conversations (social networks in context), operate in real-time and topical publishing.

Bankoff described Vox as a “technology-driven media company” and talked at length about hiring the right people and fostering the right culture. If you want to scale, you need to control your technology destiny. “Your product is your experience,” Bankoff said.

The company has a 52-person product team and built its own content platform, called Chorus, and is about to roll out its own ad platform, called Harmony. It’s “hacker culture meets journalism,” says Bankoff, who said culture is the most important part.

“Think like a platform company: not a one-off media property. Build technology, processes and company culture to scale.”

Bankoff said Vox is trying to avoid platform dependency (Facebook, Twtter Google) while relying on organic growth and conversation to drive traffic. Easier said than done. Just ask anyone who works for a media company where the number of fans and followers are the new measuring stick at corporate offices.

Vox is executing this plan with phenomenal success. More important, the impressive audience growth is translating into revenue growth as well. The focus on the business side is to target the brand marketing dollars, instead of advertising budgets. Bankoff expects $150 billion in brand marketing to move to digital in the near future. And instead of participating in the “race to the bottom” business model of programatic and banner advertising, Vox is able to focus on the higher end of the market where CPMs are actually growing.

That’s one of many questions I’m pondering as I start work on the third edition of Journalism Next. If you are a professor who has chosen to use the text in your class, or a young journalist who experienced the book in college (whether it was your choice or not), I’d love to get your feedback.

In looking at the chapter topics, I’m wondering if I need to include a separate chapter on blogging in the next edition? Is that still relevant? I don’t want to waste time trying to define “blog” in comparison to other news sites. And, as I learned this weekend at the ISOJ conference in Austin, there are actually still journalists and academics struggling with the fact that blogs exist! (“Some people just can’t over the fact anybody can say any damn thing on the Internet,” quipped Jay Rosen.)

What about a basic understanding of how the web works? Still needed in 2014? Or audio? Is that helpful for students to learn? (I had one professor tell me yesterday that, yes, it is.)

Below is a list of chapter topics from the second edition of Journalism Next. If you would take a minute and give it a look, then let me know what should be in the third edition (due out next year) and what can be “retired” I would be forever grateful.

Thanks to USA Today for featuring Fork in its tech section on Friday. As you might imagine, the number downloads and active users jumped dramatically. It’s great to see our app gaining so much traction so soon after launching.

Interestingly, the editors changed the headline midway through the day on Friday. What started as “Fork app focuses on community of home chefs” became “Fork app lets you guiltlessly post ‘food porn.’” I wonder who the “porn” term was meant to attract: readers or search bots? Regardless, you can see the story here.

USA Today picked up a story that was originally published by Ozy Media, a new site based in the Bay Area that has an A-list array of financial backers, including Steve Jobs’ widow. They seem to be taking a different approach and, so far, I like what I see. Check it out when you get a chance: www.ozy.com.

And if you have an iOS device and get a moment to download and try Fork, I would love to get your feedback.

That was my message to a group gathered at the International Food Bloggers Conference last weekend in Seattle. Unlike many news startups, food bloggers enjoy multiple revenue opportunities, because their content is “close to the cash register” in investor parlance. Some of those revenue streams include:

recipe development

teaching cooking classes

professional meal planning

catering or food production

freelance writing

writing or contributing to cookbooks

For many bloggers, their blog is a resume or brochure of sorts. It’s a way to establish their brand and credibility and open doors to new opportunities. Food bloggers also make money with more traditional publishing methods like advertising, sponsored posts and affiliate links. This creates a diversified revenue profile more akin to a media company than a “blog.” (Still not a fan of that term after all these years.)

I wanted to offer this audience a glimpse of the digital media world that I run in, highlighting some points that will hopefully help them think about their own business with a wider angle lens. Hence, the challenge to think of themselves as media companies.

It’s a good lesson for all news startups or anyone who is publishing content on a “blog.” Always be looking for opportunities that extend beyond advertising and sponsorships, or what we would now consider the “traditional publishing model.”

You can view the presentation here. And below is a collection of selected tweets from the session.

Professor Lucrezia Paxson directed that question to me in front of about 30 students at Washington State University on Friday morning by. It was the first of four classes I would speak with that day so I knew it would come up again. And it’s a question I’m asked quite frequently. For some reason on Friday, though, I had more clarity.

Like most companies, we want to hire smart, creative people.

Sounds simple but it’s not. Not for the companies or the job candidates. Since I spent all day Friday talking to soon-to-be job candidates, I’ll focus on that part of the equation for this post.

All companies want smart, creative people – whether they are media companies, tech startups or whatever. How do you prove to them that you’re smart and creative?

That’s the key. Assuming a level playing field where all job candidates know how to write and report in the journalism world, anyone can say on a resume or in an interview they are “smart and creative.” But what does that look like? For me, it looks like my friend Lauren Rabaino, who graduated with a journalism degree from Cal Poly in 2009 but had the full complement of skills that would make any hiring manager salivate: she can write and report, design, code and do social media.

How many people do you know who do can all four? If journalism schools were turning out graduates with all these skills, the landscape for traditional media companies would look much brighter. Instead people like Lauren mostly end up at places like Buzzfeed or the HuffingtonPost. To Lauren’s credit, she took it upon herself to learn all the skills. She didn’t take classes on it. And she is constantly learning and writes about what she knows and has learned. Becuase, you know, she’s a journalist.

If you want to be able to “write your own ticket” in the professional world of journalism, learn all four skills. If, like me, you don’t have all four (I really wish I had learned to code!) here’s a few of the points I repeated in my talks with all the classes at WSU Friday:

- This is the golden age of journalism. Sorry if it’s not the traditional track of jobs at big newspapers or the evening news. But there are more jobs in journalism than there were 10 years ago – before the big rescission and cutbacks. As I told the students, a big part of my daily media diet means reading content from companies that didn’t exist 5-10 years ago: Mashable, Buzzfeed, GeekWire, GigaOm, Skifft.

- “Creativity is the new literacy.” This is a quote from Chase Jarvis and I fully believe it.

- Prepare yourself now for jobs that don’t currently exist. My last 3 jobs did not exist when I was in college. So don’t focus to tightly on one career track. You may not be able to find that type of job or, as happened to me, you may not like it once you land it.

And here are some of the insightful offerings my Twitter followers offered:

And consider my path: when I was in college, my *dream job* was as a sportswriter at a big newspaper. Seriously.

Since 2000, my job has been to figure out what my job should be on an ongoing basis. I’ve been hired three times now to figure out the future. “I’m making this up as I go,” as I told the students.

How did I get these jobs? I was able to prove that I’m “smart and creative” enough to get the latitude to make it up as I go. But that’s what we do in digital media today since no one knows what will be the next Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat or Vine.

How did I *prove* that I was “smart and creative“? Before I wrote books and published a blog I did grad school projects that resulted in real-world readership: I wrote for the university research magazine, managed the alumni association website and wrote a 200-page thesis on the integration of college athletics in the South during the civil rights era in the 1960s.

All of those things led hiring managers to take a chance on me and give me the reigns to their company’s digital future. I had no idea what a blog was when I took my first digital news job in 2000, no idea what Twitter or Facebook was when I took my next digital news job in 2004 and no idea what Instagram, Pinterest or Vine were when I took my current job in 2010.

Because none of those things existed when I took those jobs.

There is a lot that doesn’t exist today that will impact your career. You don’t know what those apps, platforms or technologies will be, so don’t worry about it. Just focus on being as smart and creative as you can possibly be in today’s world. And that will set you up for tomorrow.

You know about the “elevator pitch.” It’s the concept of being able to explain an idea in 30 seconds or less, about the time you’d spend talking to someone in an elevator. It’s a great test for any idea since the longer it takes you to explain said idea, the less grasp you really have on it.

The pitch contest has become an increasingly popular format at all kinds of tech startup events. Some, like the TechCrunch event in Seattle last month, are 1-minute pitches. Others, like the SXSW V2Venture conference I participated in last week in Las Vegas, use a 2-minute timeframe.

Even though we didn’t win, the experience (and the conference) were very worthwhile. If you have the opportunity / challenge of doing a short pitch in front of judges and an audience, here are a few key lessons I learned last week:

Get to the point, FAST! Explain your idea in short, simple, declarative sentences as soon as possible. No long, run-on sentences and no jargon. Some people like to imagine this as how you would explain your idea to your parents (assuming they are not in your industry.)

Hit the high points: There isn’t time to get into the details of how everything works or how your will acquire users. You can dive into the details the judges are most interested in during the Q&A time. And by staying out of the details you’ll have more time to cover more ground.

Prepare for the Q&A: At most pitch events, there is more time for Q&A than for pitching. In Vegas, we had two minutes to pitch but seven minutes to answer questions. Anticipate what questions you will face and prepare for 3-4 of them just like you prepare for the pitch.

Practice, practice, practice: This is the only way to know for sure that you can get through your entire pitch in the allotted time. Going over or not finishing is not an option and looks really bad. If you don’t have time to meet in-person with friends or advisors who can give you feedback, just capture your pitch on a quick video on your smartphone or laptop and email it to them.

So, what?: This tip comes from Emily Best, who delivered one of the most buzzed-about sessions last week at V2Venture. Judges (and audiences) are skeptical so make sure you answer their first, most obvious question after your pitch: so, what? If possible, end your pitch with your response to that question since it will be the last thing the judges hear before the Q&A.

Stand and deliver: Maintain eye contact with the judges throughout – don’t turn your back to them to look at the big screen behind you. And don’t move around the stage. It’s only 1-2 minutes. You should be able to stand in one place for that long.

For more guidance, check out this short video from Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner. If you follow these tips and have a clear, compelling story to tell, you’ll do well. And if you’re nervous, don’t worry, it will be over in two minutes (or less).